I've read a bit on the subject, mostly on Nikki Finke's site, and I've been uncomfortable about what I've read. You're right about the well-known film being preserved (they want to milk that ol' DVD dollar), while allowing other less "accessible" classics to fall by the wayside..

Regarding preservation technology: All this ignorant JQ public film "consumer" can say is this:

I still own, in the closet, a cassette-playing Walkman and my DVD player is a combo VHS/DVD player. I can still play my vintage 1983 cassette copy of U2's "War" on my casette player perfectly. (Granted, side 1 doesn't work--it was played to death in the 80's--but side 2 works fine. (Thank God it was one of those "full album on each side" things.)

I can still pop my played-to-death-vintage 1981 VHS copy of "The Empire Strikes Back" into the VHS part of the machine, and it works as good as the day I got =it as a birthday gift when I was a little kid.

However, when I pop in my only 6-yr-old ROTK EE DVD into the DVD part of the machine, I now have to skip a couple of scenes which have been played to death and have begun ,a couple of times, to get that "frozen Picasso painting" look when the screen freezes into a million glaring pixels. It only happens a couple of times, but if I play it too much more it will go that way permanently, and I want to preserve my LOTR DVD's, whatever format becomes available..for nostalgia's sake. Juat as I preserved the former two works of art in the format they were first released in.

We all know what happens to a DVD that's been played too much. Ironically, wasn't that the argument that was hyped to sell DVD's-that they were supposed to last forever? How can we gauantee that the same won't be true of Blu-Ray? You never really know until 10 or 15 yrs passes. But I am finding that today, in so many areas, from cars to stero systems to clothes, things were really made better 20 + yrs ago. They weren't deliberately cheaply made to force you to buy it again and again, just to fill a CEO's pocket with that nice fat Christmas bonus, without which they cannot breathe. An issue that of course was not an issue 20+ yrs ago when the studios were owned by smaller companies run by MOVIE MEN and not dishwasher or whisky salesmen, and who did require such huge huge paychecks--which they knew were impossible anyway b/c being mive men they knew how risky the art form was, yet loved it so much they stayed in it to take those artistic risks.

Speaking of filling CEO's pockets with nice fat Christmas bonuses--check out these coments from Jim Cameron himself, and the company he's teaming up with for the Avatar release:

esp the comments from the Pansonic CEO. "It has to be a blockbuster to get 3D to be watched in the home." ?? Are we hyping a movie here, or just trying to sell more HDTV's and Blu-Ray players, a source of income to take the place of declining real ticket sales? Sorry Mr. Cameron--I admire you but not here. You're pimping Panasonic product, but we have yet to hear a peep about the details of the STORY behind Avatar. Reminds me of recording artists giving their songs away for car commercials.